Singles

Miri Ben-Ari - Sunshine To The Rain

Stephen Bray 15/09/2006

Rating: 4/5

Miri Ben-Ari is a Jewish hip-hop violinst. I probably should have read the description before listening to this release, as the collaboration 'twixt poppy rap lyrics and a cheerful country violin riff is truly bizarre at first listen! Indeed, I've heard rap lyrics coupled with seemingly almost every type of music over the past couple of years (usually via particularly bad mash-ups), but this really does push the boundary somewhat. It's also bloody good and very catchy.

I'm quite the fan of rap music when it intelligently uses good samples and, although the violin playing isn't a sample in the same way as, say, Beyonce's “Crazy In Love”, it does serve much the same purpose, especially on the very catchy chorus. Another example of the sort of thing that this achieves comes from a totally different age on the musical timeline when Henry Sims first started adding country fiddle to Charlie Patton's usually quite impenetrable blues recordings and made them sound far more pleasing to the fear.

Back to the present, and this song is an earworm, one that you won't be able to shake from your head. I can't see this being anything other than a very big hit, given the right push.

The B-Sides are all remixes, but they seem to be more 'reimaginings' of the title track than anything else. Slightly different riffs, lyrics and structures pervade throughout, although that catchy chorus remains much the same. All of them are well worth listening to.